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Scientific instruments

Instruments of knowledge

The origin of the collection is rooted in the first director Carlo Boni’s positivist culture and his concept of museums as workshops of advanced experiences, combined with his desire to collect antique instruments that could illustrate the various phases of scientific progress.

 

A fundamental part of this was the arrival of 18th and 19th century machines, devices and instruments, most of which came from the University of Modena’s Physics Cabinet. As a whole, the collection documents the interest that illustrious scientists and skilled craftsmen of the city showed both in advanced research and its practical applications.

 

The exhibit is organized by scientific discipline: astronomy, electromagnetics, hydraulics, optics and mechanics.

Among the items of greatest interest are Giovanni Maccar’s armillary spheres, Alessandro Volta’s lamplighter, Giovan Battista Amici’s reflecting microscope, the “perpetual” clock designed by Giuseppe Zamboni, Matteo Greuter’s terrestrial and celestial globes and the machines constructed by Brother Agostino Arleri in the university’s laboratory. Also of particular note is a selection of machine models from the Istituto dei Cadetti Matematici Pionieri, founded by the duke Francesco IV in 1823.

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